Category: Rant

I thought about and promised a 2016 review post but I don’t feel like it. I think we can all agree that 2016 was a shitty year and ended pretty horribly. Of course it wasn’t all bad, there are moments and achievements from 2016 I will always treasure, I wrote a script, had a great summer and lost 20Kgs but when I think about 2016 I mostly think about all the bad things that happened and all the people that are no longer part of our lives. 2016 sucked. Hard.

This is not going to be one of those “In Memoriam” posts and it’s not even going to be along post. All I want to say is good riddance 2016 and welcome 2017, the bar is low please be better than we expect you to be.

One book/screenplay:I have to confess that I didn’t get that much reading done this week. I have some books queued up and I started to read “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis this week. I haven’t gotten that far but the plan is to read the book at ten follow that up with the (Oscar winning) Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay. A couple of years ago I promised myself to read more non-fiction books and so far this seems like another winner. I’m not reading them to find stories to adapt (in this case that would be more than just useless) but to learn something new. I read “The Signal in the Noise” by Nate Silver a couple of years ago and that one helped me to think about statistics in a completely different way and even though I’m not that great at statistics (and don’t get me started about math) I feel that I have a general understanding of the subject matter. I hope Michael Lewis’ book about the mortgage crisis helps me understand our banking system a bit better.

Two movies: I rewatched “Ex Machina”, I did see it in theaters when it came out, and the movie is still really impressive. I love the performances and it shows that you don’t need flashy special effects to tell a sci-fi story, a great script is more than enough to do that. Another though I had while watching: Alicia Vikander would e a great April.

The second movie wasn’t that impressive, I was in the mood for something stupid and I watched Blade: Trinity. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I remembered and I’m tempted to say thats it’s not the best David Goyer movie but definitely not the worst, but damn, they need to do more of those Blade movies.

Seven pages: Still on it.

seven hours: Very productive. I’m still waiting for new material from Orlindo1 so I decided to have a look at my old time-travel tv series and I decided to revive that idea with a german/european setting. More on that at a later time.

And now for our feature presentation. So no worries, this is not going to be another Geek Treatise about D&D, the week I’m going to be way less controversial, lets talk politics. 🙂

Let’s look at this cute pig before we talk politics.

I’m a very opinionated person and I’m very interested in politics but I’d never go into politics. Just to e clear, I’m not hating on politicians, I’m sure that most of them try to do what they think is right and even when their worldview is different from mine, as long as they are honest and believe in what they are saying (and more importantly doing) I have no problem with them, my problem is with the people who vote for those idiots and their issues.

So yes, this is going to be a rant but let me start with a little disclaimer: If you can read this2, I’m probably not talking about you. If you have a basic understanding of how the world works3, I’m probably not talking about you. If you believe that 911 was an inside jo and the government can’t be trusted, I’m definitely talking about you.

Stop being stupid. Switzerland had an interesting vote last weekend, I don’t want to go too much into the details but one of issues they had to vote on, had something to do with throwing foreigners out of the country after they committed (petty) crime. I just oversimplified because it’s not really about the vote it’s about what happened afterwards and it shows that democracy’s biggest problem is its voters.

So, some newspapers wrote about how people voted and of the statistics (I bet you had no idea that that would develop in today’s main topic) was along the lines of: “high education, more likely to vote no”, “high salary, more likely to vote no”. The vote was quite clear: 41,1% yes, 58,9% no. So its no surprise that most of the bars in the statistic were above or around 50%. Sure people who attended university voted yes roughly 60% of the time, and among people with no formal education, 40% said no4. I’m not entirely sure about the numbers so don’t be and if they are not exactly true but I’m trying to make a point here. I looked for the original article but I can’t find it but that’s not that important. The comments are important.

I spent about ten minutes reading through the comments and what I read made me almost activate the Doomsday Machine. Some people were just idiots and threw racial slurs around and warned people who voted yes that they would regret their decision. Those people aren’t worth a rant but the next bunch are. Some people (on the yes and no side) argued that they either fit or don’t fit the profile of the people who votes no (or yes). I read many statements that said that “Even though he attended university, he voted no. So this analysis must be bull excrement.” To people like this let me say the following thing:

Having a university degree doesn’t say your smart or stupid but not being able to understand percentages does make you look really stupid!

So yeah, that’s all I wanted to say. Maybe a bit anticlimactic but it said to be said and they had deactivated the comments. Let’s end this post with politics as well. John Oliver made a new video you should watch. Enjoy!

Ok, let’s do this. I’m always telling myself that I should write more (blog and screenplays) but so far I only succeeded on the screenplay front. Don’t get me wrong I’m really exited that I finally have a story that is good enough to get me through third act but I also wanted to reinvigorate my blog. So far I failed miserably at the blog but I don’t give up yet and strangely the more screenplay pages I write, the more I feel the urge to write a blog post. But until now, the urge wasn’t big enough and I was missing the right topic.

Enter John August. If you don’t know his blog, check it out. He and Ken Levine are probably the best (Screenwriter) Bloggers around. In addition to his blog Joh also has a great Podcast with Craig Mazin called Scriptnotes. But, I’m not here to advertise other peoples blogs or podcasts, even if the are great.

Today I want to talk about something really *insert mean and/or derogatory word of your choice* John August did. What he did you ask? Well, he had the audacity to write a blog post on HIS blog in which he gave us HIS opinion about why he thinks children should learn the guitar or the piano before moving on to another instrument.

Man, did he hit a nerve. On the shit-storm was out of proportion. Unfortunately he turned of the comment section so you can’t read it now but trust me when I say some people went overboard and let me tell you why.

Do I think Mr. August has a pont? Yes. Was the argument well laid out? Yes. Do I agree? No. Do I hate him now? No, why should I?

I get his point. I play the Saxophone myself, Tenor to be precise, and I love it. Looking back at my own biography and other circumstances (music education works different here in Liechtenstein) I don’t think that I would still play an Instrument if I had chosen a different path. I always liked playing in a group and speaking as the president of the local music society I hope that mister August’s plan doesn’t get implemented because we need clarinets, trombones, …. I play the saxophone quite well and contrary to Mr. August I think that it’s equally as useful as playing the piano … and don’t get me started on those camp fire guitarists. Sure there are days when I would love to know how to play piano but last year our orchestra performed Bolero and Rhapsody in Blue and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.

But why don’t I get offended then you might ask. Well I might disagree with him, but he never wrote that I’m stupid if I don’t agree with him. So why should I call him names. It’s an argument and it is a complicated subject matter so nobody is really right or wrong here. It’s a discussion. It’s boring if we all agree and just because I don’t agree with something you say doesn’t mean I don’t respect you or what you do.

People get easily offended. I think some people even search the internet to find things to be offended about and by good there’s a lot out there to be offended about. But a well written argument you might disagree with is not one of them. If you’re offended you get defensive which is really stupid because nobody attacked you. You don’t have to defend yourself. Just make your point, preferably politely and follow the discussion. You might learn something new or even change your mind. Imagine you change your mind, really embarrassing of you trashed the author at first.

To be honest, I’m not really talking about John August’s post. Sure, in a way I am, it’s the reason I wrote this but the issue is an old one and you can see it everywhere, especially in politics. Barack “Muslim-fashist-socialistic-christmas-killing-devil-worshiping-tree-hugger-who-is-to-chicken-to-really-do-anything-substantial-about-global-warming” Obama comes to mind but let’s not go there. I think I made my point.

Don’t be a dick and don’t get offended.

Greg

P.S.: Thanks John for the comment holiday, it made me write this post. 🙂

I admit it. I like bad movies, I really do and at least for me there’s nothing wrong with that. I even like movies that completely fail at every single level. It’s like watching a train wreck. You don’t want to look, but you have to. The Core is one of those movies. To be honest, I think the Core and Armageddon are basically the same movies. One goes up, the other goes down. But if I had to chose which of those two films I want to watch, I’d always choose The Core. Don’t get me wrong, both movies are crap, well entertaining crap but whereas Armageddon is Blockbuster crap that filled theaters, The Core is a rare breed of crap so far out there that it’s hard not to call it a craptastic masterpiece of epic proportions.

But I’m not here to talk about The Core (I’ll do that later, but I want to get that one right), I want to talk about the crap that’s out now.
I recently saw that Battle Los Angeles movie. O. M. G. WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Skyline? What the hell. I could go on but I think you get the kind of movies I’m thinking of. To be fair, nobody expects a movie like Battle LA or Skylien to be good, to be honest I kind of hope for them to be “bad”, but the good kind of “bad”, entertainingly “bad” not “let’s-see-if-we-can-bore-the-living-shit-out-of-you bad”.

Is it just me or has the quality of bad movies declined recently? Where are the truly great bad movies of the last 2 years? Thank you Hollywood for ruining bad movies. Well done.

It is that time again. Bad music in the radio? Check. Shops filled with crazy people buying too many presents? Check. Crazy, power sucking christmas lights everywhere? Check. Bad christmas episodes of usually good shows on TV? Check. I could go on but you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate christmas, actually I quite like it but please can we just celebrate it a few days? I don’t need a whole month or more to prepare for christmas. I can eat and drink a lot anytime I want. I don’t need to prepare for that and while we’re at that, I also need no preparation for getting presents, I don’t need a month to prepare for my birthday so why should I need a month before christmas?

But it’s too late to complain. Most of the harm is already done. You can’t undo hearing WHAM! for the first time, it scars you till january. In the good old days we used to have a interesting movie release in december to get you through it but it seems like TRON LEGACY has january start date. There is the Doctor Who Special, but wait thats’s christmas themed.

I guess I just have to live with it, that every year western civilization gets visited by the christmas spirits and takes it’s toll. We are all doomed.